Dumontis

Building Autonomy in Continual Improvement

Respect

Tell me, does it make a difference in how you treat your car depending upon whether it is a company car or your own? And what about homes: is there a difference in maintenance between rented homes and owned ones? A 2013 study, conducted in the Netherlands by Platform31 based upon the national registration of the quality of the Dutch housing stock (the KWR), concluded that only 8% of owner-occupied properties could be said to be in a poor state of maintenance whereas this number was 21% in the case of rental properties. Ownership seems to be an important factor in how much we care and invest in our work. So how do I create ownership in my organization? And how can the concept of autonomy in Lean help?(more…)

We often speak about the two pillars of the Toyota or Lean system, and when doing so we think of the two well-known pillars of just-in-time (JIT) and built-in quality (jidoka). JIT thereby focuses on manufacturing only the necessary products, at the necessary time, in the necessary quantity by deploying pull flow (kanban), one piece flow and leveling. Jidoka, built-in quality, or autonomation focuses on quality control by stopping the process when abnormalities are detected based upon elements such as standardized work and visual control. But is this correct? Where is “Respect for People” in all of this?(more…)

Respect is the foundation for trust and productive collaboration between team members, team members and their leaders, as well as between teams and organizations. However, I sometimes feel that respect and trust are seen as a non-tangible concept that should be discussed between people and when done, “we’ll see whether it improves”. An open atmosphere is being created to enable people to put their concerns on the table, on why they feel trust among the team is lacking. But generally these meetings do not seem to be very productive in building trust, as no action is being built in. I always feel that Lean, however, can often provide the concrete vehicles, processes and behavior that can actually build trust through what I call resp-act…(more…)